The son who, having been informed of God's will for his life, wastes his time and opportunities, will lose what he has been given and will stand before the Lord naked and ashamed.

The son who is diligent, using every moment of time and every bit of strength to serve God in the establishing of His Kingdom, will be rewarded with infinitely greater and more glorious responsibility.

In 1948, while in Bible school, the Lord made alive to me the subject of the seven feasts of the Lord. I had never heard teaching on this subject, except for the fact that Brother Oliver Ellenwood, a distinguished Bible teacher of many years ago, mentioned the feasts while he was lecturing on the Tabernacle of the Congregation.

When I heard of the feasts from Brother Ellenwood, something stirred in me. Soon afterward the Lord impressed upon me the fact that the spiritual fulfillment of the Day of Atonement, the sixth feast, would be experienced by the churches, and that the fulfillment has to do with judgment.

Of course, this was new to me at that time, having been a Christian for about four years. It was a long time afterward that I learned of the Jewish interpretation of the solemn Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. The Jews hold that God judges the world during the ten days from the Blowing of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) to Yom Kippur.

Over the last fifty years I have come to see that the Christian concept of grace covering our sins, that we will not be judged for our conduct, is unscriptural. We indeed shall be judged, not in terms of our past sins, for they were forgiven on the cross. It is our conduct as Christian people that indeed shall be examined.

If I am correct we Christians now are entering God's judgment, including fiery trials. All of this is for our salvation.

As we labor in faithfulness let us keep always before our eyes the prospect of a new world in which there is no sin or rebellion at all—not even the memory of sin. The presence of sin, having been removed from the saved creation, will be confined in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. Those who desire to do so may go to the area where the presence of sin has been imprisoned so they may renew their understanding of the consequences of rebelling against God.

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh. (Isaiah 66:24)

The righteous will be in the new world in their bodies while the wicked will be in the Lake of Fire in their bodies ("carcases"—see verse above).

The Lake of Fire has authority over us as long as there is any worldliness, or sin, or rebellion in us. When the Lord Jesus Christ delivers us from all spiritual darkness, the Lake of Fire no longer has authority over us (Revelation 20:6). We have been reconciled to God through the operations of the Day of Atonement. (from The Day of Atonement)